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Gary Unmarried
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CBS, Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m.
The new sitcom "Gary Unmarried" has a couple of fundamental things working against it. For one, the fact that it's a multicamera sitcom, a television format that would be dead if CBS (and to a lesser degree, Fox) didn't insist on keeping it attached to its feeding tube. Then there's star Jay Mohr, who has done virtually nothing to justify his celebrity since "Action," his short-lived Fox series that's nearly a decade old. And while I realize it's my job to watch everything with an open mind, I just don't care for Mohr and I was pretty determined not to like this show. Therefore, it's with chagrin that I report that "Gary Unmarried" is actually pretty funny. Should the "30 Rock" writers be worried? Certainly not. But for what it is—a very safe, very traditional sitcom—"Unmarried" is pretty appealing. Mohr plays the title character, a divorced painter and father of two trying to rejoin the dating world. His ex-wife Allison (Paula Marshall) snipes at him, and he snipes back. They're sitcom exes—what are they going to do, have a functional relationship? But their one-liners hit more than they miss. Mohr's exchanges are even better with Kathryn Newton and Ryan Malgarini, the child actors who play his son and daughter. Gary tries to calm his son Tom's nerves about interacting with girls, when Tom says he's nervous about the prospect of a girl asking him to "tap it." It doesn't sound terribly funny on paper, but Mohr and Malgarini earn the laugh. I may have to change my verdict on Mohr, who, like his new show, is funnier than he has any right to be.
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Worst Week
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CBS, Mondays, 9:30 p.m.
It's been eight years since Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro faced off in "Meet the Parents," and now the consensus is that it was a hilarious movie. I thought so myself, but I distinctly remember a broader range of reactions to the movie. There were those who found it funny, others who found its crescendo of disaster awkward and hard to watch. It's quite a tightrope walk to introduce a character to moviegoers, make them care about him, then subject him to one humiliating calamity after another and expect them to laugh about it. But that's just the premise of "Worst Week," an American riff on a British format in which a well-intentioned but hapless guy courts misfortune despite his best efforts. Kyle Bornheimer plays Sam, a journalist trying to endear himself to his girlfriend's parents, as she's pregnant and he intends to marry her. On the night he's supposed to show up for dinner with the family, a string of embarrassing circumstances causes him to end up on their doorstep dressed in nothing more than a self-made plastic diaper. It goes downhill from there. At the Television Critics Association press tour, creator Matt Tarses said that the show's Murphy's Law premise will play out week after week, as Sam is introduced to increasingly mortifying mishaps. Even as someone who adores "Meet the Parents," I don't see how that works. I just didn't find "Worst Week" funny; it was just kind of sad. It's tricky to succeed at both making the audience care for Sam and delight at his misfortune, and "Worst Week" pulls off the former at the expense of the latter.
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The Mentalist
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CBS, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.
The police procedural is such well-worn territory that new ones have no choice but to dial up the quirk, add something novel to the premise that makes it worth watching. "The Mentalist" certainly succeeds at delivering an ambitious concept. It's not a novel one, though. In fact, "The Mentalist" veers pretty close to another current show, USA's "Psych." Both shows feature a character, in "The Mentalist's" case Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), who pretends to be a psychic when in fact he is just good at noticing things. He gets paired with actual cops, some of whom are suspicious and dismissive of his deductive skill. But whereas "Psych" is a broad comedy, "The Mentalist" is a serious crime drama, which makes such an outlandish premise much more difficult to credibly execute. Jane, a former cold-reading charlatan, helps an investigative team led by Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) to solve serious crimes, like a gruesome double murder in the pilot episode. He dissects the crime and fingers the culprit, not with schmancy forensic science but with good old-fashioned intuition. The rakishly handsome Baker is winning, but his character isn't served well by the show's execution. In some scenes, the camera acts as Jane's eyes, showing you what he's looking at to arrive at his conclusions. Other times, he just pulls indiscernible facts out of thin air, and is always right. His special powers either seem not that special at times or all too special at others, especially as he continues to remind everyone that he's not actually a psychic. We later learn his motivation. He went on television and claimed to intuit facts about "Red John," a serial killer who leaves a bloody smiley face as his calling card. When Jane arrives home, he finds that Red John paid a visit to his wife and child while he was out. If it seems like the show whiplashes between tones, it's because it does. But that strikes me more as a pilot problem that will even out as the show progresses. "The Mentalist" is worth a three-episode trial.
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The Ex List
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CBS, Fridays, 9 p.m.
CBS loves its psychics. There are the fake ones ("The Mentalist"), the buxom ones ("Ghost Whisperer") and in the case of the new comedy "The Ex List," the cartoonish ones. Elizabeth Reaser plays Bella Bloom, a flower-shop owner with a rich and storied romantic past. Don't call her a hussy—that would be sexist—but let's say she has enough ex-boyfriends to fill up the Aspen Room at the downtown Radisson. During a wild bachelorette party for her sister, she's told by an over-the-top psychic (Anne Bedian) that she has already dated and split from her soulmate. If she doesn't make her way back to him—and fast—she can look forward to a life of loneliness. Bella dismisses the fortune until some of the psychic's other predictions come to pass, and she becomes determined to work her way back through her plentiful beaus to find the one she prematurely dismissed. There are plenty of reasons to hate Bella. She seems needy and self-centered, not to mention she's ... oh, let's just face it, she's a hussy. But Reaser, with beauty, grace and natural comic timing, makes her likable. By the end of the first hour, you get why a gaggle of guys have passed through her life, and that she doesn't have a short attention span; she's just looking for Mr. Perfect and refuses to accept anything less. We should all have that resolve. Joining her in her search through the refuse bin for the Man of Her Dreams is a tempting proposal.
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Valentine
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and
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Easy Money
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The CW, Sundays, 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. (Premieres Oct. 5)
It's easy to see why the CW thought these two new dramas should be paired. They are both about family businesses and they are both beyond awful. "Easy Money" follows the Buffkins, a family of loan sharks running Prestige Payday Loans. That oxymoronic business name is about the best thing "Easy Money" has going for it; otherwise, it's just moronic. The biggest issue with the show is its insistence that the Buffkins have connections to everyone in town. It's a credibility issue that "Weeds" also had earlier on. In order to invest in "Weeds," you had to buy into the fact that nearly everybody in town smoked pot. It's a little hard to swallow, but far more manageable than the idea that every last person in the fictional southwest town of South Nile needs borderline-predatory payday loans. What's worse is the first episode's utter lack of forward momentum. Plots are hinted at more than executed, and the characters and premise are so lackadaisically introduced, I have a sneaking suspicion that the episode airing as the pilot wasn't originally intended to be the pilot. It's far too subtle and rudderless, which is unfair to the mostly good cast, particularly Laurie Metcalf, formerly of "Roseanne." Metcalf is a jewel, and it's a darn shame she has to slum it to this degree. Same goes for the astonishingly pretty Marsha Thomason, who has the unfortunate task of schlepping a subplot so ridiculous I don't feel like typing it out. For a show about a family of loan sharks, my rate of interest was pretty darn low.
Then again, after watching "Easy Money" I didn't sit slack-jawed at how awful and dishonest it was. I did feel that way about "Valentine." It's about a family living near Hollywood's Laurel Canyon—or so it seems. The Valentines are actually, yes, Greek gods and goddesses who have assumed false names. Aphrodite (Jaime Murray) has become Grace, Eros (Kristoffer Polaha) is Danny, and Hercules (Robert Baker) is Leo. Though they never mention the Greek name, Phoebe (Autumn Reeser) is supposed to be the Pythia, the priestess who oversaw the Oracle of Delphi, a pool of water that allows its user to see past, present and future events. As they are slowly becoming irrelevant—Greek mythology irrelevant? You don't say!—they must work hard to restore mortals' belief in the power of love. There isn't a single moment in the pilot that feels earned. When the couple that the family is working so hard to bring together finally connects in the end, the scene is unbelievable even by fantasy standards. There's very little joy to be found in Love, Mythology Style.
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Little Britain USA
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HBO, Sundays, 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.
HBO has always been in a bit of a quandary. We expect it to take risks and put on challenging, outside-the-box television, but when the shows fail (see "John From Cincinnati") the network takes a huge hit for it. The risk is as big as the reward, but lately HBO's risks haven't been paying off. It has added to its comedy roster with two new shows, "Little Britain USA" and an animated series, "The Life and Times of Tim." The former is an American version of a hit British show, starring the original's duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who play the bulk of the characters. It's super-duper broad, at times downright disgusting, sketch comedy. It rolls out in vignettes spanning the country and a host of characters in rapid succession, not unlike "Tracy Ullman's State of the Union." But where that show goes for a loose narrative thread, "Britain" is even more disparate, throwing a whole lot of rude and vulgar characters out and seeing which ones stick. For me, it didn't work. There are clearly a lot of folks who think Lucas and Walliams are funny guys. Michael Patrick Jann, former member of sketch troupe the State, directed most of the pilot, and David Schwimmer shot the rest. Rosie O'Donnell makes a guest appearance in a sketch about a weight-loss group. But I just didn't laugh—not because it was gross-out humor, but because it wasn't funny.
I had a very similar reaction to "Tim," a crudely drawn adult cartoon. Tim is a young workaday slacker with a gift for getting himself into sticky situations. He'd be just like Sam from "Worst Week," except that Sam means well but has bad luck. Tim just has bad judgment. It's hard to feel sorry for him when his girlfriend comes home with her parents to find a prostitute in the house with Tim, refusing to leave until she gets paid. The scenes that follow are awkward, but not particularly funny. I can see why both "Britain" and "Tim" are supposed to be funny. Unfortunately, they aren't—at least for me. But anyone fond of shock humor should try out both shows, though, to see if fortune will favor HBO's characteristic boldness.